Edward Hagelstein
Edward Hagelstein has published short fiction in various publications. He lives in Hawley, Pennsylvania.
County Fair
Category: Issue 10
Sirena
Isaiah Duey
Dear Kuya,
Papa told me a story about sirenas last night. He said they wreaked havoc after setting foot on human land and should have just stayed on the sea. He said being with them is contagious, that I could get their fins and that’s bad because their very existence is a sin. Are fishes sinful, too? Is that why people eat them? I don’t think I’d fancy sirenas for dinner because I actually like the luster of their tail. I think they shine in the moonlight or when the moon pulls the tide, though I’m not sure. But I don’t tell Papa about this, Kuya. Because sometimes I’d hear him pray I don’t get fins. He said he can already see my skin having flecks of scales on them, and that I might have been infected so he’s started a treatment to get rid of them. He lets me take swigs of his beer, like a man he said. I’m guessing beer is some sort of medicine, but I’m not sure about this either, Kuya. I still like chocolate milk best. On days the sun accents my scales, Papa would scrape them off my face like prepping a tilapia to be fried on a skillet. My face, arms, and legs burn from all the scraping, Kuya. But Papa said we must do this to make sure I don’t leave for the sea, too.
Anyway, enough about me. What’s it like in the sea, Kuya? I hope you’re having fun.
Your brother,
Chito
Isaiah Duey loves mermaids and the stories they hold. Her work has appeared in Five Minutes, 101 Words, and Versification. She hails from a country in Southeast Asia where she lives with her calico cat named Anya.
Making it better
Tim Love
When she cuts her knee in her grandad’s garden and cries, he carries her in and sits her on the settee, rubbing her leg.
“It’s a strange thing, crying,” he says, “Some people cry because they’re happy. Some people watch sad movies to make themselves cry.”
Confused, she stops crying and twists her hair like her mother does.
“When I’m sad,” he says, bringing his laptop over and sitting next to her, “I type ‘lollipop'”. He slides the laptop over. “Go on,” he says, “Try it.”
She wants to show off. She knows it has a double L.
“See how easy it is? Try it again.”
She types it three times, faster and faster.
“I like raspberry ones,” she says, “They’re blue, because red ones are strawberry. Blue’s my favourite colour.”
He remembers the lollies in the freezer and brings her a blue one, taking the laptop away because he doesn’t want it to get sticky.
“That was the last one,” he says. “Your gran used to keep an assortment in the freezer. I’d better buy some more. Maybe they do packs of blue ones.”
She makes the lolly last, watching him as he types faster and faster.
Tim Love’s publications are a poetry pamphlet, ‘Moving Parts’ (HappenStance) and a story collection, ‘By all means’ (Nine Arches Press). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His poetry and prose have appeared in Stand, Rialto, Magma, Unthology, etc. He blogs.
Sewing
Dominik Slusarczyk
Do you discard?
You know you could mend instead?
Here:
Let me show you how to sew.
All you need is
This little needle.
The thread appears where
You want it to die for you.
Dominik Slusarczyk is an artist who makes everything from music to painting. He was educated at The University of Nottingham where he got a degree in biochemistry. He lives in Bristol, England. His poetry has been published in Dream Noir.
suitcase dream
Emily Munro
1.
toy guns
one looked like a bird
I didn’t bother to fold the clothes
2.
the plastic bag
given by my mother
apples: cooking below, eating on top
and slices of dry bread
3.
which of it was mine
my children’s
my husband’s?
Emily Munro is a writer, archive curator and filmmaker based in Glasgow. Her writing explores themes around the environment, anxiety and parenting as well as our ambivalent relationship to the past in the Anthropocene. She was longlisted for the 2023 Caledonia Novel Award and the 2022 Briefly Write Poetry Prize.
Street Ghosts
Mark Valentine
On the way to the old alabaster works,
on a hot day, the river brown and slow,
buzzards above the hill, the air still,
we came upon the overgrown mosaic
made by local children years ago,
a picture-book plan of their world:
cars, ponies, trains, church, school,
mostly succumbing to the red mud,
the bright tiles cracked or chipped;
an abandoned tableau, zest now lost,
its artists grown up and gone away,
streets haunted by dandelion ghosts.
Mark Valentine lives in Yorkshire and likes second-hand bookshops, vegan food, canal walks, small towns, and village hall flea markets. His work has appeared in PN Review, Agenda, M58, Finished Creatures, Raceme, Volume, Atrium and in a chapbook, Astarology (Salo Press, 2021).
Circular Orphans
Gina Twardosz
I think she might’ve whipped it at him in the street once, or more likely, he asked for it back, but somehow, I have come to possess my mother’s engagement ring. It has a modest red stone, possibly garnet, shaped into a heart, placed onto a sleek gold plated band. It didn’t cost a lot and was bought so far after their engagement that I remember its selection and purchase. I don’t think my father proposed with any ring, they just shook hands like a business proposition. It was a marriage of convenience, mostly, which is not to say there wasn’t any love ever, but mostly the certificate was signed because it made sense (love, to me, has never made much sense) and I feel odd owning it now so I’ve stuffed it away in a box. I think about wearing it sometimes but I can’t detach it from its symbolism. Garnet is also my father’s birthstone. I almost pawned it once, but I hated the thought of someone else having it. I don’t think the ring will ever be worn again. I don’t think it’s something to be passed down. I think, maybe I should give it back to my mother, but then what would I even say? Here’s this love back.
Gina Twardosz (she/her) has had work published in Thimble Literary Magazine, Gotham’s The Razor, and Querencia Press. She has work forthcoming in Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose and Cobra Milk Magazine.
For That One Friend I Don’t Speak to Anymore
Chloe McIntosh
Anyway,
Sorry for the teeth at your collarbone,
The venom in your throat,
The way you never got to the centre of me
No matter how far you burrowed
And how much I promised it was right around that bend
The things we are to each other
Are nebulous and weak
As the tea your flatmate leaves
Scattered on every surface of the house
I just wanted you to take a chance, give a little,
Believe in something crueller and more wondrous than what you’d come to expect
But all we got was the shed skin, the tetanus, cold mugs, heating bills we can’t afford,
Ghosts of each other
Ripped out of every photograph
Chloe McIntosh is a poet and writer of short fiction from Hertfordshire. She has a BA in English Literature from the University of Exeter and was shortlisted for the Platypus Press Celestial Bodies Poetry Competition. Her work is also forthcoming in Lucent Dreaming’s For a Friend Anthology.
Volunteer veterans
Vyacheslav Konoval
A battalion is born
from former police officers,
wear a chevron
take the patch and medallion.
Training ahead
blood, sweat and loss,
shame, I’m in a warm bed.
Vyacheslav Konoval is a Ukrainian poet whose work is devoted to the most pressing social problems of our time, such as poverty, ecology, relations between the people and the government, and war. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Anarchy Anthology Archive, International Poetry Anthology and Literary Waves Publishing.
A measure of the past from the future
Namratha Varadharajan
I scroll through the new world
and there is a face
that reminds me of a closed door.
The promise of everything
that flew away, the hidden ocean
of (possible) emotions. Everything
away from sight. The
we was never a we, and the
(never we) became an I, I
should have stuck
my face inside the wet earth, I
should have (again and again)
dived off ledges and fell into tears. Instead
in the now. nothing.
which makes me think there was nothing then.
Namratha Varadharajan writes to explore human emotions and relationships, and our interconnectedness with nature while trying to chip at the prejudices that plague us, one syllable at a time. Her work has been published in The Yearbook of Indian Poetry 2022, The Kali Project, The Gulmohar Quarterly, The Alipore Post, haikuKATHA, Poetry Pea, among others.
Briefly Write 